“It’s time for Republicans to understand the reality that national security also means health and housing and financial security, but no — the Republicans and Donald Trump want to spend more on a Star Wars missile defense and nuclear arsenal,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), standing at a podium Tuesday with a sign that said “Slash the Pentagon.”

Markey along with other Democrats slammed Republicans for proposing a $150 billion increase to the defense budget while Musk and his DOGE lieutenants are gutting agencies that handle medical research grants, consumer protections, education, and humanitarian aid.

As @SenSchumer and Congressional Democrats are attempting to come up w/ a cohesive defense as Trump & Musk dismantle federal agencies — @SenMarkey and a group of House Democrats are urging the administration to instead focus their attention on the “Pentagon’s oversized budget.” pic.twitter.com/SPBgY60qUh

— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) February 11, 2025

“This bloated Pentagon budget does not make us safer, we don’t need more nuclear weapons when we already have more than enough to destroy the world ten times over,” Markey said.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) argued that a new conflict of interest will arise if Musk and his team get access to classified information at the Pentagon since some of the information could be linked to Musk himself and his companies. The U.S. government has shelled out around $17 billion in federal contracts to Musk’s company SpaceX, according to a government website that tracks federal spending.

“The serious conflict of interest ensures that there is no chance that DOGE will take any meaningful action to mitigate the right wing cultural war nonsense that Republicans have provisioned into the NDAA,” Omar said.

At the same time on Tuesday outside the Capitol, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) rallied with federal workers, union members, and labor activists at the American Federation of Government Employees, vowing to keep fighting until DOGE and Musk are kicked out of every federal agency. The fiery rally included calls from lawmakers to “f*** Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

“The attack on you, the attack on the civil service is unacceptable, unconscionable, un-American, and we are going to stand with you until each and every one of those unlawful executive orders are completely reversed,” Jeffries said. “Buried in the ground, never to rise again.”

The mixed messaging comes as top congressional Democrats have struggled to come up with a cohesive defense as they attempt to respond to the sheer volume of executive orders, personnel changes, and policy shifts since Trump took office less than a month ago.

Jon Reinish, a prominent Democratic strategist, compared Democrats’ response to Trump’s first weeks in office to former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign. 

“Like Harris, they’re switching messages every day so nothing sticks,” Reinish said.

He pointed to the Markey news conference on Tuesday, stressing it’s unclear what the Massachusetts Democrat is trying to accomplish with his “in the weeds civic lesson.”

“It’s very disappointing to see Democrats … continue to be so out of touch when it comes to actually fighting for priorities and trying to reposition themselves in front of voters,” Reinish added.

Others in the party also questioned the strategy and worried that some Democrats appear to be on completely different pages.

“It’s confusing. You have leadership condemning Musk and DOGE and their unilateral actions inside these federal agencies, but then you have this group of progressives saying DOGE why don’t you come and cut the Pentagon budget? It’s just counterproductive,” said a Senate Democratic aide speaking on the condition of anonymity. 

“There needs to be one unified message, repeated over and over and over. It’s a strategy that works — Republicans have used it successfully; look at their messaging on the border,” the person said. “When public perception is truly only one of the tools we have at the moment, it’s important we deploy it effectively.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) insisted that Democrats are unified when asked by the Washington Examiner about the discrepancies in strategies for combating Musk and DOGE.

“We are on the same page; it ought to be done through the Congress and lawfully, not by an agency coming in and cutting. That’s unlawful. The overwhelming majority of courts have said it’s unlawful thus far, and that’s how it ought to be done,” Schumer said. “We have a rule of law, we have separation of powers; I’ve never seen it violated on such a massive scale, and that’s why the courts are undoing it.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) also defended the variety of responses from Democratic senators thus far.

“We are very much together on this chaos that this administration is creating and how people need to fight back, so there are various ways that we’re fighting back,” Hirono said.